‘What our world needs most of all today is love… because the deepest, albeit often unacknowledged, human longing of our time is the longing for true love.’ – Pietro Archiati

The word love has become so hackneyed that it can mean almost anything. Yet the concept or idea of love remains one of most unfathomable mysteries of human life. Here, in five carefully sculpted chapters, Pietro Archiati takes up the challenge to illuminate and expand upon our understanding of this most fundamental and unique quality of human existence, beginning with the great themes of ‘Love and Hate’ – the ‘salt and pepper of life’ – and concluding with ‘Realism and Idealism’: Is it really possible to love the whole of humanity? And, how do we balance individual freedom with the ideal of fraternity?

Along this journey, the author asks and addresses numerous questions, such as: What are the causes of sympathy and antipathy, and is love more than a feeling? What do masculine and feminine really mean today, and what role does sexuality play in freedom? What value is the heart without the head (and the head without the heart)? And what do the great religions – in particular, Islam and Christianity – have to say on these subjects? Archiati tackles the difficult and problematic topics of ‘Love and Sexuality’, ‘Love and Death’ and ‘Love and Reason’. As a special focus, he investigates ‘the logic of the heart’ and what it can mean for humanity’s future development.

PIETRO ARCHIATI (1944-2022) was born near Brescia in Italy. From the age of ten, he attended a monastery school in a small missionary Order. After graduating from high school, he studied theology and philosophy in Rome and Munich. He worked in Laos as a teacher during the Vietnam War and later as a missionary in New York, including in the Marriage Encounter movement. In 1977, whilst a hermit on Lake Como in Italy, he discovered anthroposophy, which became his lifelong passion. He later said: ‘Within days… I knew with profound certainty: This is what you have been looking for your whole life… Its effect on me was like a hurricane.’ From 1981 he worked in South Africa as a lecturer in a seminary. Tension with the Church increased with time and ultimately led to his work no longer being possible within its framework. After leaving the Church in 1987, he became a freelance speaker and author of numerous books. From 2004 until his death, he co-founded a publishing company, Rudolf Steiner Ausgaben. His many prefaces and epilogues to the Steiner volumes he published are an attempt to build a bridge between anthroposophy and contemporary life.